


the last ten years (it's been quite a trip)

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Flying Doctors
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Het, Post canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 10:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13269699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: Chris knows it's not their anniversary. Tom knows different.





	the last ten years (it's been quite a trip)

**Author's Note:**

> For fic promptly theme "some years later"  
> Prompt:   
> Author's Choice, Any, looking back on important decisions after a decade

Chris is awoken by the sensation of lazy kisses being trailed along her shoulder blade. It makes her smile and she shifts slightly to grant Tom better access. That in turn makes his lips turn up in a smile - she can feel it against her skin - and he tightens his arms around her waist. Only for a moment though and then he’s moving away slightly, leaving just enough space to pull her around so that she’s lying on her back, looking up at him. He brushes a lock of hair back from her cheek and, even after all these years, her stomach still flips at the look in his eyes. 

“Good morning,” she says and he leans in to brush his lips over hers. 

“Happy anniversary,” he counters and she frowns, tilts her head in question. She’s good with dates - better than Tom usually - and she knows that today is not their wedding anniversary. He sees her reaction and he must understand it, because he chuckles softly. “What were you doing ten years ago today?” 

Chris thinks, counts back in her head and then she remembers. 

“Oh.” 

Tom raises both his eyebrows in what she knows to be his “I’m not really offended but I’m going to pretend that I am” face. “Oh? Is that all you have to say when I point out that it’s the anniversary of the day that changed your life?” He goes from teasing to serious in the blink of an eye when he adds, “Our lives.” The look in his eyes, the way his hand glides down her neck makes her shiver. 

She knows they both have bad memories of that time. Hers come in nightmares sometimes, a Ute coming towards a bus at horrifying speed, the screams of her fellow passengers, the scrape of metal against the road. His aren’t that different, though he only has the sounds that were transmitted over DJ’s rigged up speaker system to remember, though Chris knows his imagination easily supplied the rest. For a few minutes, minutes that had seemed like years, Tom hadn't known if she was alive or dead and that, as he had told her when they’d finally sat down to have a proper talk, had been when he’d realised he couldn’t live without her any more. 

She’d always known she didn’t want to live without him and when he’d asked, she’d moved across the country, left a job and a flat she hated in Melbourne, a supply panel that offered her steady, stable work, and joined Tom in the Kimberly Desert with a quarter of the equipment and a third of the budget. They hadn't had much but they had each other and what they've built together - their practice, their home, their family - Chris wouldn't trade for the world. . 

"I can't believe you remember the date," she whispers as her fingers tangle in the short hairs - rapidly greying now, much to his chagrin - at the nape of his neck. 

"I keep telling you, Chris," he says, "I remember all the important things." It's not the first time he's told her that in the last ten years, usually when he's forgotten to do something she asked him to do, but this time there's none of his usual lightheartedness. He's completely serious and she will not, she is determined, start to cry before she's even got out of bed. 

"Smooth talker." But he can probably hear the tears at the back of her throat and he grins as he leans down and kisses her again. She winds her arms around his neck and pulls him down so their bodies fit together and things are just starting to get interesting when he, for once, pulls back. 

"The girls..." 

Chris casts a shrewd eye at the clock and does some quick mental maths. At seven and four, their daughters have been known to come into the room without knocking. Then again, today is a school day, which usually means Chris will have to go and wake them - if it was a weekend, they'd have been up for an hour already. "I'd say we have twenty minutes before I need to get them up," she says and he looks delighted. 

"I can do a lot in twenty minutes," he tells her and proceeds to make very good on his word.


End file.
